What Keeps Me Up at Night?

It’s not the big blowups that keep me up at night. It’s the silence before them.

You know the ones—long-simmering conflicts, toxic personalities, or broken processes that never make it into a meeting agenda but shape the culture of an organization all the same. These are the things that quietly erode trust, wear down morale, and eventually show up as formal complaints, lawsuits, or worse—a segment on Dateline.

Most people inside the organization already sense these issues. They talk about them quietly in break rooms or vent to friends after hours. But few feel safe enough—or empowered enough—to name them, let alone address them. That’s what makes them so dangerous. Not their complexity, but their invisibility.

It’s that early-stage conversation that’s often missing. The moment before someone files a grievance. The thought process before someone decides to quit, call a lawyer, or quietly disengage. The best time to intervene is before a pattern becomes policy or a conflict becomes public.

Leaders are often surprised by how much they don’t know. Not because they aren’t paying attention, but because the system around them filters what they hear. Employees don’t want to come off as complainers. Supervisors don’t want to look like they’ve lost control. HR doesn’t always have the bandwidth—or the positioning—to handle nuance. And even the best open-door policy has its limits when power dynamics are in play.

Early conflict resolution exists in that in-between space. It’s not the complaint box. It’s the conversation that never makes it to the box. When patterns emerge, a conflict resolution professional can surface them, with care, confidentiality, and context, so the organization can act before it reacts.

What keeps me up at night is knowing how often these stories go untold until they become headlines. But what gets me up in the morning is knowing that these stories can be heard earlier, quietly, constructively, and with a path forward.

Five Ways to Spot the Trouble Before It Starts:

1. Create spaces for informal feedback. Not every concern belongs in a formal report. Open up channels—anonymous check-ins, skip-level meetings, listening sessions—where employees can share what’s really going on, without fear of retribution or escalation.
2. Pay attention to what’s not being said. A lack of complaints doesn’t always mean a lack of problems. Silence can signal fear, disengagement, or learned helplessness. If your culture rewards compliance over candor, you won’t hear the truth until it’s too late.
3. Watch for patterns, not outliers. One complaint might be noise. Three with similar themes is a signal. Track concerns across departments, shifts, or supervisors. Repeated stories—especially whispered ones—often point to systemic issues.
4. Train leaders to listen without fixing. When employees bring up concerns, the goal isn’t always resolution—it’s recognition. Equip managers to hear people out without rushing to defend, dismiss, or diagnose. That space to be heard is where trust begins.
5. Bring in a neutral party early. By the time HR is looped in, damage may already be done. A neutral third party—like an organizational ombuds—can surface issues in a confidential setting, help explore options, and prevent small fires from burning the whole place down.

#OrganizationalOmbuds #ConflictPrevention #WorkplaceWellbeing #LeadershipTools #WhatYouCantSayButICan